The present invention relates to a method of transmitting data from a sender to a number of recipients in a system with a multilayer protocol architecture, in which the data are divided for organizational purposes into data packets having header data and payload data, a transmitting and/or receiving unit and a communication system.
The term data is understood within the present invention to refer to not only any form of information and/or message but also information which is essentially promotional or unsolicited; that is, in particular, an offer, an advertisement or promotion for a product innovation and consumer information in some other form.
In the case of many services and applications offered in known modern communication systems, information is to be transmitted not only to one mobile radio user but also to two or more mobile radio users. Examples of such services and applications are newsgroups on the Internet, video conferences, video on demand, distributed applications and many more. When messages are transmitted to various users, it is possible to send a copy of the data separately to each recipient. Although this technique is simple to implement using what are known as unicast connections, it is unsuitable for large groups. Since, when sending to N recipients, the same message is essentially transmitted over N individual connections and, in the process, sent repeatedly over common connection paths, this method requires a very high bandwidth.
The present invention is, therefore, directed toward providing a method, a transmitting and/or receiving unit and a communication system which make it possible to send messages to a targeted group of recipients without significant additional administrative effort and with a low transmission bandwidth requirement.